Tagging and Libraries
I think user-generated content can certainly have a place in libraries and on library websites. One huge reason I see for doing this is the issue of accessibility and useability. Library OPACs are looking and feeling increasingly dated. They are clunky, uninviting, and often not very forgiving. For example, if someone types in an author's name in the firstname-lastname format, they will not get any results in my library's catalog. People are used to searching Google, the ultimate forgiving search, that corrects spelling and truncates for you. A misspelled word in the OPAC's search bar will get nothing. Should people really need to be taught how to use the library's catalog? User-generated content, especially through tags, could really help this problem.
I see the point of many people who have already written blog posts on this subject that user content often needs to be monitored because of profanity or simply bad tagging. However, if enough users are tagging, this does somewhat self-monitor. I believe that profanity can be automatically filtered out, and misspellings will eventually get filtered out simply because of other users. However, a great solution to this is to use LibraryThing's preexisting tag clouds. When LibraryThing and the library OPAC partner, you get the perfect mix of the collective genius and local availability. I think this partnership can begin to solve the problem of the difficult-to-use and uninviting library catalog. However, in the examples I see of it, the tags are at the very bottom of the page, difficult to see. If they were displayed more prominently, perhaps in a sidebar, they would make the page more inviting and encourage users to search further.
User-generated content in partnership with LibraryThing can go a long way in improving OPAC searches and in patron's impressions of the library, without too much investment of time and resources by the library itself.
